


Unspoken.

by crqstalite



Series: Scream My Name [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: DA2 spoilers, F/M, Reyna Hawke - Freeform, The Last Straw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26738203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crqstalite/pseuds/crqstalite
Summary: All the words she couldn't say.
Relationships: Anders/Female Hawke
Series: Scream My Name [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946113
Kudos: 4





	Unspoken.

**_she._** she had done this. had enabled it for blind trust in a man she’d come to love.

and she’s been lied to. played. taken advantage of in more ways than one. all because she had finally let go of her inhibitions, her pain, her terrified nature that said, that _screamed_ that something would always go wrong. she’d given him everything there was to her.

and this is what he did with her trust. he used it

she’d never been religious, but nausea clambers up her throat as the ashes settle over the city, eyes stinging dry. she can’t turn away from it, even as meredith’s tirade begins again. the flames that climb the ruins feels like it’s burning inside, heat making her heart race in her chest. static rings in her ears before the sound of weapons being unsheated and the tingle of magic invade her senses all at once. fenris is arguing with her -- determined to leave. it doesn’t feel like her voice that’s telling him to go if wants to. it doesn’t feel like her voice that is on the brink of screaming. it doesn’t feel like her body that spins on him,

it doesn’t feel like her that berates the rest of the party into submission. aveline has concerns, but she has her back. the others do not put up a fight, yet the look of fear from merrill makes a part of her cower away from the monotone voice she uses.

only for a moment, is there a chance to act. before she knows it, they’ve leapt into battle. templar armor stained with blood, the shattering of lyrium potions on the ground as she takes up a protective stance in front of her sister. it feels like old times, startling adversaries while bethany takes advantage of the distraction she provides. but she can’t look anyone in the eye, she barely knows what she’s doing. too much of it is a blur. avoiding blades and shields and fireballs and maker anything but watching what is left of the chantry burn.

_was i wrong? i was bound to get hurt._

when it is over, she’s forced to pull an amell blade from the head of a dead templar. the insignia of the order is dented beyond belief from brute force. his eyes loll back in his head, and she averts her eyes when she hears the gush of blood dribbling out from his forehead.

orisinio gives her the ultimatum. he does not decide for her -- and she understands why. **he** isn’t part of the kirkwall circle, and yet **he** has made the decision for all of them. now they all pay the price.

 **he** won’t even look her in the eye. turned firmly away from her as he sits on a crate, head in his hands. something is burning at the corner of her eyes, looking at his hunched over form. the form she’d once thought was all she needed, thought that this was everything. her happiness. her home. the one thing she still had left in this fucked up city. how he’d meant the entire world to her.

first it’s frustration, tears stinging her once dry eyes and bubbling up like hot magma, threatening to spill down her cheeks. he doesn’t even feel sorry, no verbal apology at least. only the tone of a tired man. he’s not sorry for stringing her along, making her think she is evidently saving his life from a spirit that was evidently becoming a demon. thinking that she’d done him a service. thinking _thinking **thinking**_ that she was doing what was right.

would she have tried to stop him, had she known the truth?

there was no compromise. that much she knew. meredith would continue in her tyranny if nothing was done. it wasn’t as if she hadn’t gone to her own extreme of denying templars when they came to her for help, even becoming something of an urban legend -- a templar hunter in the streets of lowtown and darktown on offnights.

but she feels pain blooming in her chest. like a shot to the heart, he’d decided he couldn’t trust her with this, with any of this. nothing his manifesto could’ve prepared her. so many nights of quiet retellings of the day, so many evenings of simply holding each other without a word.

how many times did he deliberate over whether it was worth trying to tell her? did he even think about what she would’ve said? how she now knows she’d never be able to look into those amber eyes the same way ever again? how had she simply ignored how on edge he seemed, how dejected in favor of believing it was little more than meredith worrying him? how had she not seen, not asked?

why hadn’t she asked merrill, or even bethany when she visited what those ingredients even did? she knew anders was resourceful, and that his case was special. but no one ever just became unpossessed. it was unheard of.

was it worth the sacrifice? was it worth all of this?

the tone of someone who knows his death is in the cards. it startles her out of the words that die in her throat along with her anger. then he knew he’d die for this. knew he’d taken up a cause that he wouldn’t see the end of -- without any remorse. there’s no fleck of emotion there, anywhere. he tells her to do what must be done.

that freezes her in place, her hand just over the sheath of her knife on her thigh.

he thinks she’ll kill him. leave him as martyr, a rallying cry for every mage in thedas once the news got out of the free marches.

she can’t speak. she tries, she **wants** to. wants every single word of **betrayal** and **fear** and **anger** and **_hurt_** to come spilling out of her mouth so that he can hear it. hurt him right back in the way that he has hurt her so badly. she wants to tell him the way she sat up waiting for him for ages to come home from the clinic, she wants to tell him that she only wanted to help and this is what he did with her good nature, she wants to tell him about how he has doomed an entire group of people now, how nothing will ever be the same and how he...

how he has broken her. how she was willing to break every rule for him, willing to follow in her mother’s footsteps, willing to ignore his warnings that she would only be hurt in the end. all for him. all for a chance at a relationship. one that would be mutually beneficial to them both, one that she treasured. how even though it felt like the distance between them was stretching further and further, that she still thought it was worth it.

_was he wrong? should she have listened to his warnings all those years ago?_

she can’t. she knows what’s right, she knows what she should do, what she must. but she also knows what she lives for. the one and only thing that is the reason she isn’t buried somewhere, the one and only reason she stays careful in the field just so she can come home to him. the future she’d seen is shattered, but another forms in it’s place. she doesn’t want to let go.

she can’t.

she knows what she stands for, she knows what she believes in.

and if this is how they must express it, if this is how she must show her support for the mages of thedas, if this how she stands against oppression, if this how she lays her support out for her _lover_ and his plight --

then so be it. tears and anger and annoyance and fear could come later. right now, she had a war to fight.

the only thing that comes out is a request as she lowers her hand away from the knife on her knee, one that surprises her and him when she holds out a hand and he turns to her,

_“come with me.”_


End file.
